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“For those who think the Obama administration is using the waivers to drive the Common Core, this drives a Texas-sized hole through that logic, pardon the bad pun,” said Chad Aldeman, associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners. “It’s just not true, yet I see it misreported all the time. Texas has no intention of participating in the Common Core, yet there it is with a waiver.”

Education Secretary Arne Duncan even pointed out Texas during a Common Core event at the University of Chicago late last week. Frederick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute said he wanted the department to promise it won’t require states to adopt Common Core assessments in order to get waivers.

Duncan pointed to Texas, Minnesota and Virginia, which have waivers but not Common Core, just like Alaska. Minnesota has adopted the standards but only in English/ language arts, not math. The federal government can’t interfere with local control over curricula, he said, or “I go to jail.”

Hess said the Education Department’s move to grant Texas a waiver is just Common Core damage control.

“When there’s enough backlash, the administration will quiet the critics,” he said in an interview. “After months of pressure, the administration was probably pretty desperate to get a waiver just to get some of the critics off its back.”

Texas has arguably been one of the loudest critics of the standards, Aldeman said.

The state’s refusal to explore the Common Core was at the heart of why Texas didn’t apply for Race to the Top funds in 2010. Texas has its own college- and career-ready expectations for its students. Republican Gov. Rick Perry has been defiant in communicating with Duncan, saying he will not adopt “unproven, cost-prohibitive national curriculum standards and tests.”

“In the interest of preserving our state sovereignty over matters concerning education and shielding local schools from unwarranted federal intrusion into local district decision-making, Texas will not be submitting an application for RTTT funds,” Perry wrote in January 2010.

Common Core aside, from the first draft of the state’s waiver application earlier this year to the final product approved by the Education Department in late September, Texas made big changes to accommodate the government’s wishes. It set some very ambitious goals it most likely wouldn’t have outside its quest for a waiver.

Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said Texas buckled before the federal government in applying for the waiver at all.

“These are promises on paper,” he said. “If you’re the state of Texas, and you want this flexibility, then you just have to feed the beast. … It’s fascinating to see [Gov.] Rick Perry of Texas cave while [Gov.] Jerry Brown of California has stood strong. … Texas has decided to give into political coercion.”

California adopted the Common Core but doesn’t have a waiver with the exception of eight districts. The Education Department denied the state a waiver in December — to no one’s surprise — because it didn’t meet basic requirements. For example, the application didn’t include a teacher evaluation system based on student growth measured by standardized testing — a provision that many waiver states have struggled with. All other states without waivers, except Nebraska, have adopted the Common Core.

Despite initial concerns that waivers are tied to the Common Core, the Texas Education Agency applied because it was right for the state, said Kalese Hammonds, chief adviser for policy and operations at TEA.

But Texas definitely made concessions to get its waiver, said Anne Hyslop, policy analyst at the New America Foundation.

“When I first read their request, I said ‘There is no way this is going to happen,’” she said. “A lot of details were missing. … I was surprised that they made as many changes as they did given Texas’s relationship with the federal government.”